Nomination Form

Eligibility Criteria

The SMART 100 Awards are governed by three simple eligibility requirements:

The innovation must be Australian.

We’ve adopted a broad approach to this eligibility requirement. If the innovation is the product of an Australian team working for an international company, we define that as an Australian innovation. If the innovation is the product of an international team working for an Australian company, we define that as Australian. Use your own common sense and if in doubt, email: smart100[@]australiananthill.com.

The innovation must be a product or service.

While incremental innovations that assist an organisation improve its internal processes are important in a broader context, the SMART 100 was developed to recognise innovations that can be bought and sold. If your innovation was not developed for commercial purposes (i.e. you work for a highly innovative organisation that has developed many innovations for internal process improvement purposes), perhaps check out the Anthill Cool Company Awards, which were developed to recognise innovative companies, rather than innovations, per se.

The innovation must have been launched in the last three years.

We understand that an innovation can sometimes take a while to gather some steam and attract target market adoption. However, in our eyes, an innovation must also be novel and new (see criteria). We do not mind if the innovation was developed many moons ago. Sometimes that happens, particularly in research institutions. But it must have been launched for commercial use in the past three years (during or after April 2008). Innovations on the cusp of launch for commercial use will also be accepted.

We have made some exceptions for research.

Sometimes research innovation takes a while to move from the lab into a commercial context. Sometimes the innovation was developed for one purpose but finds a market elsewhere. If your research has developed a solution to an existing problem with a clear prospective commercial purpose, we will accept your submission. But please bear in mind that our maven judges will be reviewing each application with the commercial function of the innovation at top of mind.

We ask applicants to use there own discretion and understanding of these terms if in doubt.

Nomination Form

Application Process

Stage One (Nominations): Anthill Magazine, through online, print and direct mail channels, invites nominations from its readership and the broader Australian marketplace. CLICK HERE (NOMINATE)

Stage Two (Applications): Nominated organisations will be given the opportunity to complete an online submission form and survey outlining the innovative attributes of any given product/service. CLICK HERE (APPLICATION)

Stage Three (Initial Screening): Submissions will undergo an initial screening based on the clarity of the application, condensed and uploaded to a private holding area of the Anthill website (Important: To get past this stage of the process, it is essential that you ensure that your entry is clear, concise and articulate.)

Stage Four (Maven Judging): The maven judges will be invited to rank 20 submissions each according to a set of criteria, presented as a survey form online. Through this ranking system, the 100 most innovative products or services will be selected and published.

Stage Five (Readers’ Choice): Readers will be given the opportunity to read and evaluate the Top 100 submissions and vote according to a three tier process.

Stage Six (The Announcement): The Top 100 Index will be announced, along with the Readers’ Choice winner. Winners will be provided with tools to assist them promote their selection for the Top 100.

Nomination Form

Maven Judging Panel

The SMART 100 is not your typical awards program. It employs over 50 ‘maven’ judges to evaluate submissions. Each submission is evaluated 20 or more times, according to a number of set criteria.

So, what’s a maven?

Most people define a maven as a trusted expert in a particular field. The word comes from the Yiddish meyvn and Hebrew mevin (מבֿין), with the same meaning, which in turn derives from the Hebrew binah, meaning understanding.

For our purposes, a maven also means a person who seeks to pass on this knowledge to others – an intense gatherer of information and impressions, the first to pick up on new or nascent trends and share them.

Mavens play a vital role in the commercial success of new products and services.

Unlike early-adopters, who are attracted to any new technology, mavens are more discerning. They are thoughtful in their approach to the adoption of innovations and that is why they are often turned to as trusted advisers.

A successful innovation may be attractive to your average early-adopter but mavens are the people who will bring a successful innovation into the mainstream.

Our ‘mavens’ have been selected from people who we know to possess ‘maven’ skills and people who have self-identified as a ‘maven’ that we have vetted. To nominate yourself as a ‘maven’, subscribe to our eNewsletter and wait for our ‘call for expressions of interest’.

Nomination Form

What is the Readers’ Choice Index?

The Readers’ Choice Index provides an opportunity for Anthill readers to vote on SMART 100 applications. The voting process is extremely simple. Site visitors need only take one or more of the following actions to vote:

Tweet it: Top left of each page (3 points)

Trigger a Reaction: Facebook ‘Like’, etc (2 points)

Leave a Comment: Anonymous comments excluded (1 points)

At the conclusion of the Readers’ Choice component, we’ll tally up the results to create an Index of the top 100, according to the votes of our readers. *Only one comment per person will be measured. Anonymous comments (i.e. Captain Darling etc) that can’t be sourced back to a real human being will also be excluded.

Why have we done it this way?

Readers’ Choice Awards are usually conducted for two reasons. The first is to provide readers with a voice. The second is to raise awareness of the program.

As such, we acknowledge that most award programs that rely on crowdsourcing (including ours) often end up becoming (for want of a better description) media sanctioned popularity contests.

Rather than rail against this hard fact (Oh, the inequity!), we’ve decided to ignore our internal cynics (the ones in our brains, not just the ones in our office) and reward voters according to the effort they put in and the reach of their own networks.

This way, we can make the awards stronger, help them reach more people, raise greater awareness of the applicant innovations and generally all do ourselves a big favour!

Nomination Form

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